A couple of years back I posted about the Southern Baptist Conference’s ongoing rape and harassment scandal on Facebook (ongoing in that they still haven’t adopted a system to stop this happening again, and that some scumbags in the church still think this is trivial compared to the threat of women preaching). Someone responded that I was biased: why didn’t my post acknowledge the SBC is no worse about rape than any other organization?
Of course he didn’t suggest which organization he was thinking of; people who make this argument never do. And most of them would be outraged by the corollary, that if the SBC is no different than other big organization, then they don’t get to pose as being a superior moral voice. The religious right hates the idea they’re not our moral superiors, except when they get caught doing something bad, then “we’re all sinners.” Sorry, you don’t get to have it both ways.
While I do think religious groomers and rapists are worse than secular ones — your project manager can threaten your job if you report them, but they can’t threaten you with God’s wrath — it’s also true that (as I point out in my Undead Sexist Cliches book) these things happen plenty in secular society. Liberty University turns a blind eye to students reporting rapes but many colleges are bad about that. The late, unlamented preacher John MacArthur punished a parishioner for keeping her abusive husband away from the kids but so do secular authorities.
But anyone who says a variation of “all organizations are like that” is a rape apologist (I blocked the commenter). Because even if the SBC was, statistically, no different from another organization of the same size, that’s irrelevant to judging them. According to the report they commissioned on their failure, the SBC refused to take action despite credible rape and harassment reports. One of the board, Augie Boto, kept track of cases in a database while publicly claiming no such database was workable. He bore false witness, claiming the accusers were mostly liars. This is morally disgusting, regardless of whether it’s typical. “We are all sinners” is supposed to be a call for humility, not a get out of jail free card.
To put it another way, if someone rapes a woman, we are not obligated to write “he only raped one woman, in contrast to serial rapists Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.” One rape is evil enough (I am fully aware that lots of people don’t think rape is evil at all, but they’re wrong). And I suspect if I’d written about harassment in a secular organization and commented that “it’s no worse than the SBC” my friend wouldn’t have liked that either.
Comparing the SBC to other organizations doesn’t make what happened okay, doesn’t excuse anything. That’s true of all organizations and individuals. That rape, harassment and misogyny are widespread doesn’t mean we should great specific incidents with a shrug (“It’s no worse than Augie Boto.”), it means we should get mad (or determined or whatever it is that pushes you to fight) and stay that way.
I have zero acceptance for people who pretend otherwise.
Also zero patience for Michael Knowles explaining Somalis suck (they’re the Necrotic Toddler’s latest hate object) “because Somalia is a rape culture. Africa, the African continent is a rape culture. They rape people there a lot, in the Middle East, in the subcontinent. They that’s what they do. And so we don’t like that, right?”
Dude, America has a rape culture, particularly Republicans (not exclusively). The response of multiple right-wingers to Blasey Ford’s accusation against Brett Kavanaugh was that even if he did it, it was no big deal — lots of boys do it, she didn’t fight hard enough, etc., etc. Churches (including but not limited to the SBC and the Catholic Church) cover up for their priests and pastors and screw over the victims. People choose to believe most rape victims lie even though statistics don’t support that. I will guarantee that Knowles doesn’t care except when it’s convenient to bash immigrants or the like. But he’s part of the rape culture he pretends he hates.
